Wind on the Water

  • Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Transcript

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Say you want to make some money putting up windmills. You need a place with lots of wind, lots of open space, and lots of people who will want to buy your power.

It turns out, Nantucket Sound off the east coast is an ideal setting.

Jim Gordon first proposed the Cape Wind Project in 2001. The windmills would be as tall as 40 story buildings. And could power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

“Look, it’s not a question of Cape Wind or nothing. It’s a question of Cape Wind or a new nuclear plant or a new coal plant, or a heavy oil fired power plant.”

And that’s where people on Cape Cod get their power now – a power plant that burns oil. Boats making deliveries to the power plant have spilled oil into the water.

Jim Gordon thought it was a no-brainer. Replace dirty power plants with clean renewable energy.

But his plan ran into a bunch of opposition from rich and powerful people.

Roger Whitcomb wrote a book on the Cape Wind Project. Whitcomb said at a recent lecture that a lot of the opposition came from names we’re all familiar with – the Kennedys, the duPonts, and the Mellons.

“Most of these people were summer people. And they basically just didn’t want to look at these wind turbines, or the way they thought would look, because many of them had actually never seen a wind farm or a wind turbine. But they didn’t like the idea of anything violating the visual integrity of their horizon.”

There’s also some opposition from fisherman, some Indian tribes, and some locals who live on the islands. But Whitcomb says the bulk of the money for the fight against the Cape Wind Project comes from the rich and powerful.

Right now, those groups are challenging environmental reviews and permits in the Massachusetts Supreme Court. All these legal challenges – all these permitting hoops – put a damper on big projects.

Roger Whitcomb says we used to be a people who thought big. But that’s changed.

“It’s very difficult to do anything in the United States anymore. We’re way behind everybody else. This isn’t a can-do country anymore. There’s been a huge change. This is not where things are done.”

Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan.

And despite all the legal and political barriers, it looks like the country is closer than ever to seeing its first ever offshore wind farm built.

There’s a lot of popular support for the project in the region.

Ken Salazar heads up the Department of Interior. He told us this past spring he expects projects like Cape Wind will go forward.

“You know I expect that it will happen during the first term of the Obama Administration. I think that there is huge potential for wind energy off the shores of especially the Atlantic because of the shallowness of those waters.”

Siting big wind farms is a new kind of battle in this country. In some cases – like the Cape Wind project – energy development is moving closer to the wealthy.

Ian Bowles is the Secretary of the Energy and Environmental Affairs Department for the State of Massachusetts:

“Many of the dirty fossil plants of a generation ago were sited in cities and many times in environmental justice areas where there’s lower income residents. And I think today, you’ve got in many ways you have more wealthy set of opponents of wind power that is going to relieve the people who live in cities of some of the clean air burdens from siting decisions made a generation ago.”

That means some wind farms can change the game. They move power plants from the backyards of the poor, and into the views of the rich and powerful.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em

  • Every march, the Cownose Stingrays migrate into the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

Transcript

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

In a little boat just off shore of Virginia’s Cone River, AJ Erskine leans overboard. He is using 20-foot poles with gaping jaws full of long needle like teeth to scrape the bottom of the emerald colored river.

“These things are called hand tongs.”

Up comes a pile of oysters. They’re only about a year old.

“We don’t feel comfortable giving them more than one year of a chance.”

That’s because Erskine is worried about stingrays, specifically Cownose Rays. Every march, the winged sea creatures migrate into the bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat.

“What they do is flap their wings, put the oysters in a pile, and crunch the shells, and they go through a seed bed of oysters in a weekend.”

Erskine says it’s become a huge problem for oyster farmers.

The rays also damage the underwater environment. They uproot aquatic grasses, destroying nurseries for fish and blue crabs.

Some biologists believe there are more rays because a main predator – the shark – has been overfished out in the Atlantic. Tiger Sharks in this area have declined 99% over the past 30 years.

Other biologists say it’s that strict limits on fishing in the Chesapeake Bay have meant fewer rays caught accidentally in giant nets. Whatever the reason, oyster farmers are looking for a way to control the rays.

A hundred miles inland, in Richmond, Mead Amery thinks he has a solution.

“Depending on how you prepare it, it’s delicious.”

Avery is a seafood distributor. He and officials with the State of Virginia want you to try stingray.

“The texture is wonderful, it has a veal pork type of texture.”

It’s been a tough sell so far.

“People hear ray and think, ‘I don’t wanna eat that!’”

Marketers are trying hard though. They don’t call it Cownose Ray but rather Chesapeake Ray. They’re pushing the ray in restaurants from Virginia to Japan. And it may take off – after all, lobsters used to be considered insects of the sea and only the poor ate them. The popular Chilean Sea Bass used to be a nuisance by-catch.

But, while those cases offer hope for marketers, they carry warnings for environmentalists. Both Sea Bass and Maine lobsters were dangerously overfished because of their popularity. Bob fisher is a biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He knows full well there are risks involved in going after stingrays.

“You remove a top predator like that from the food chain, we don’t know what the repercussions would be.”

He says stingrays are slow to mature and give birth to only one offspring at a time. And no one even knows how many there are. But Fisher is still very much open to the idea of harvesting the rays given the problems they seem to be causing for oyster growers.

“I look at things that are in our oceans as resources, it’s our responsibility to take care of our resources, but it’s also a resource that’s there that can be, and I believe should be, utilized for humans.”

Fisher is working with the Marine Products Board, and the Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan to strictly limit fishing of the ray to what’s sustainable.

So, if the whole thing is successful, you might find Chesapeake Ray on a plate near you.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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Hurricane Season Is Here

  • Monday, June 1 is the official start day of hurricane season (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Today is the first day of the Hurricane season,

but we’ve already seen a tropical depression off

the Atlantic coast. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Today is the first day of the Hurricane season, but we’ve already seen a tropical depression off the Atlantic coast. Lester Graham reports:

The Weather Channel noted that tropical depression was farther North earlier than any potential hurricane in the 159 years of storm records.

You can’t help but wonder whether climate change is having an effect here.

Jeff Masters is a former hurricane hunter, now with Weather Underground.

He says that’s not what’s happening. He says this storm was getting stronger by following the the gulf stream.

“There just happened to be a little blip of warm water associated with the gulf stream that this storm took advantage of. It was a very small storm so it was very lucky. It was able to stay over the warmest part of the gulf stream.”

Masters says it’ll be decades before we’ll be able to tell if climate change is actually affecting hurricanes.

Forecasts this year call for a pretty average hurricane season.

Masters says an El Niño event could occur later. That’s important, since the number and intensity of Atlantic storms are usually reduced during an El Niño year.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Bringing a Fish Back From the Brink

  • The American Shad became so rare that hatcheries had to help restore depleted populations (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-Achour explains:

Transcript

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s
capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-
Achour explains:

I bet you can’t recognize this sound.

It is the sound of a female shad – it’s a type of fish – having its eggs squeezed out into a metal
bowl.

“In the bowl, it looks like applesauce.”
That’s biologist Catherine Lim. We are on a boat in the middle of the Potomac, 20 miles south of
Washington DC, harvesting and fertilizing shad eggs. Lim picks up a male shad and gives it a
squeeze.

“Yeah, he sprayed out there.”

She mixes the brew around and adds water.

“We’ll bag them up and send them to the fish hatchery.”

This is all part of an effort to restore the population of the American Shad. For millions of years,
the large silver-iridescent fish have swum in from the Atlantic and up the rivers of the East Coast
every spring to spawn. They return to the same place where their lives began, guided by a
unique geological odor that seeps from the earth and mountains that feed each river.

Once upon a time – only a century ago – these fish were so numerous they turned the water silver
and made rivers move.

At least that’s what Jim Cummins says, he’s a biologist.

“On the Susquehanna, there were so many of them they created a wave as they came up the
river, a standing wave.”

On the Potomac they fueled entire industries. According to newspaper reports, Washington DC
exported 4 million barrels of salted shad every year in the 1840’s.

“The wagons would come into Georgetown were so heavy that they crammed up the city – I think
it’s the first report of gridlock in Washington.”

The fish fed more than just commerce – they nourish everything from crabs to dolphins. Bald
Eagles actually evolved to time their egg laying early, so their chicks would hatch just as the Shad
and their relatives appeared in the river. And then came overfishing, dams, and pollution.

“In the 1960’s, there were times when the migratory fish came up to spawn in the area and met
that pollution, and hundreds of thousands of them died and made a stinking mess.”

The clean water act was passed in 1972, but by 1980, the fish were almost wiped out. A
moratorium on fishing at the time was too little too late. Water quality gradually improved as
waste water treatment plants were upgraded and aquatic grasses returned. But still, no Shad.

So Cummins began the Shad restoration project.

They had to use several nets – each hundreds of feet long – just to catch one fish. They got help
from fisheries and even elementary schools. Dams were fixed to let fish go around them. The
Shad population exploded.

At a boat house just outside of DC, anglers Steve Bocat and Louis Covax are enjoying success
that up until recently, few alive have seen here.

“It was great we had incredible fishing. I mean, between the two of us, we had, what, 50-60 fish
up to the boat?”

Another sign of success, a pair of Bald Eagles recently returned to the area following the fish –
the first in decades.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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Invasive Die-Off Stirs Fishery Debate

  • A naturally reproduced wild lake trout fingerling. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR.)

The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:

Transcript

The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But, some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:


When we started digging canals, connecting the lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, things changed a lot for the fish in the Great Lakes.


First, the sea lamprey got into the lakes through the Welland canal that bypasses Niagara Falls.


The lamprey is an eel-like parasite that nearly wiped out the big fish in the Great Lakes by attaching to them and sucking the life out of them.

Also slipping through the canals was a smaller fish, the alewife. Since the lamprey wiped out most of the predator fish in the lakes, the alewife population exploded. They out-competed native fish for food. It got so bad, that by the mid 1960s, if you weighed all the fish in Lake Michigan, more than 80% of the weight would have been alewives.


So, once wildlife managers got the sea lamprey under control, they had to figure out what they could do to get alewives under control. The fish biologists decided to introduce new predators, trout and salmon, to prey on the alewives. These fish were not native to the Great Lakes. Expensive nurseries were built by federal and state game agencies to keep supplying new trout and salmon every year to prey on alewives.


Forty years later, in Lake Huron, the alewife population collapsed, and in Lake Michigan alewives are declining rapidly. Mission accomplished, right?


Well, in that 40 years, a whole recreational fishing industry has grown up around fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. Some fishery managers now say we have to find a balance of the right amount of alewives to sustain the introduced trout and salmon fishery. So, recently states have cut their trout and salmon stocking programs to give alewives a chance to recover.


Tom Trudeau [who] operates a fish nursery for the state of Illinois says it would cause trouble to try to take the Great Lakes back to native fish only.


“We do have this industry that we have pressure to keep. You know, you’re putting a lot of people out of business if you get rid of it.”


And Trudeau says because of ecological damage, many of the smaller native fish on which big predators used to feed have been wiped out.


“So, I mean, of the six or seven species in that category, we only have one. And a couple of them are extinct. So, I mean, we could talk about going back to the ideal situation of pure native species, but we’ve disrupted the habitat so much.”


So, the argument goes, the invasive alewives are now needed. But something unexpected happened when the alewives disappeared from Lake Huron. The native fish, walleye, yellow perch, and lake trout started doing better.


Dave Fielder is a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.


“We’ve long known that adult alewives were a predator and a competitor on newly hatched perch and walleye fry. We just didn’t realize how substantial that effect was until finally the adult alewives were removed from the system and now we’re enjoying some greatly increased reproductive success. Walleye, particularly in Saginaw bay, are at some of the highest levels that we’ve seen in a long time.”


But, after 40 years, people are used to fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. And some fisheries managers are wondering what will happen to all those expensive nurseries that provide their jobs.


What happens to all of those charter boat fishing operations, fishing tourism, if the government were to stop stocking those trout and salmon? Would they switch to fishing for native fish? And, can the native fish even survive in the long-run since so many of the smaller native prey-fish are no longer around?


Dave Fielder says it’s hard to say.


“So, we’re kind of in the middle of a change – it’s really a paradigm shift in many ways – and that’s always scary because nobody really knows how we’re going to end up, but I prefer to be optimistic. I think there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful in regards to the benefits that we’re seeing for our native species.”


But some fisheries managers say the debate of whether to go all native or to try to find the right mix of native and non-native fish is not over. Since invasive species, pollution, and habitat destruction have changed the Great Lakes so much, wildlife managers think they’ll still have to keep stocking one kind of fish or another to keep the recreational fishing industry going. If that’s the case, does it matter whether it’s native fish, or the introduced fish that anglers have grown to like so much?


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Migration Season Brings Bird Flu Worries

  • Julie Craves stands in the area where she sets up mist nets during migration to catch land birds. (Photo by Christina Shockley)

Researchers have been monitoring the spread of a potentially deadly strain of avian influenza overseas. Health officials worry the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form that could infect humans. Some researchers say the virus could make its way to the United States as early as this fall… by way of wild migratory birds. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

Researchers have been monitoring the spread of a potentially deadly
strain of avian influenza overseas. Health officials worry the H5N1
strain could mutate into a form that could infect humans. Some
researchers say the virus could make its way to the United States as early
as this fall… by way of wild migratory birds. The GLRC’s Christina
Shockley reports:


Wild birds carry all sorts of influenza viruses. Most are of no threat to
people, but the H5N1 strain is different. When it gets into people… it’s
often fatal. Overseas the strain has killed whole farms of poultry such as
chicken and ducks… it’s also infected other types of animals, including
cats.


The H5N1 strain has not been found in the United States, but most
experts say it’s just a matter of time before it is. Some say infected
domestic poultry or smuggled pet birds will likely bring the virus to the
U.S. Others say the virus could come here by way of migrating birds…
that are on the move now.


Steve Schmitt is the lead veterinarian for Michigan’s Department of
Natural Resources. He says birds from Asia… that are possibly infected
with the H5N1 strain are on their way to Alaska right now. There, they
could mingle with birds that will later fly back to the United States.
Schmitt says there are four major flyways over the U.S.… the Pacific,
central, Mississippi, and Atlantic.


“There are birds that will winter in Asia and then come back and nest in
Alaska. If they bring the virus back with them, then they could transmit
that to birds that are in Alaska that come down any of these four major
flyways, and that of course is a big concern, moving it all over the
country.”


Schmitt says most birds that nest in Alaska use the Pacific flyway along
the Pacific coast… to migrate south to the U.S. and Mexico. He says
that means, if the virus were to come to the United States via migratory
birds, the pacific coast would probably be its first stop in the lower 48.
Schmitt says then, birds that use the other flyways could become
infected.


“Most of the migration is north-south, but you do have a few that will
move – jump over to another flyway, and when that happens, the
potential to move the virus to that new flyway happens. Once it’s in a
new flyway, that north-south movement would take over.”


Programs are underway an Alaska and throughout the United States to
test wild birds for various strains of avian influenza, including H5N1.
Experts say waterfowl and shore birds are the most likely carriers of the
dangerous strain, but some say land birds – such as migrating songbirds –
should be tested, too.


(Sound of birds)


Julie Craves studies land birds at the Rouge River Bird Observatory on
the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus. She catches and bands
thousands of wild birds each year during their spring and fall migrations.


This year, Craves will participate in a study that hopes to eventually test
hundreds of thousands of birds across the U.S. and Latin America for
avian flu strains.


“It’s just a great opportunity with people handling birds already, we may
find out some very interesting things about which subtypes are present in
land birds, and if indeed this disease does come to North America, we
will have a head start on seeing what types of migratory pathways are
being used by birds.”


Craves says very little is known about how avian flu moves among land
birds, and experts say each time the virus is transmitted to a different
species it mutates, and each time it mutates, the chances are greater that
it will change into a form that’s easily passed among humans. That’s a
big concern, because such a mutation could lead to a quick spread of
human cases across the globe.


But some say that might never occur… they say the strain might be
unable to mutate into one that’s dangerous to humans.


Arnold Monto is a professor of epidemiology at the University of
Michigan. He says there will be a problem if the strain mutates, but it’s
unlikely people will get the virus from migrating birds.


“I doubt very much whether we’re even gong to see even a handful of
cases in the United States, should avian influenza arrive, and it probably
will, with the migratory birds coming down from Alaska, perhaps next
fall.”


Monto says most of the human transmissions overseas have been from
poultry being raised in the back yard, and not from wild birds. That
means visiting the ducks and geese in the park… and feeding songbirds
in the back yard… are not high-risk activities. Monto says people should
take basic precautions, such as washing hands, to avoid contracting any
sort of flu virus.


Many experts say, on the list of things to worry about, catching a deadly
form of avian influenza is no where near the top of the list of dangers.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

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Smaller Fish After Alewife Die-Off

  • Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus). The fish is not common in Lakes Superior or Erie. (Image courtesy of Wisconsin SeaGrant)

This past year, the size of salmon in some Great Lakes
is getting smaller because their main food source is dying off in some
areas of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

This past year, the size of salmon in some Great Lakes is getting smaller because
their main food
source is dying off in some areas of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester
Graham reports:


In the 1960’s, fish and game officials introduced Pacific salmon such as chinook,
coho and
steelhead to control the invasive species alewife. That’s a small fish that moved
in from the
Atlantic. The salmon are popular fishing. But since the alewives are not native…
they’re
especially susceptible to quick weather changes. And fisheries managers suspect
competition
with zebra mussels for food also affects alewives. Recently, alewife populations
have crashed in
some places. Jim Dexter is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources…


“The primary reason that there are not alewives in Lake Huron and you get
fluctuations in Lake
Michigan is related more to the climate. You know, now, zebra mussels are tied into
that, into the
equation at some point but not probably to the affect that the climate is having on
those.”


So, without as many alewives, salmon don’t have as much to eat… and they’re smaller
than usual.
Fisheries managers say the effect is probably temporary.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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